Donkey Kong (Video Game)
Donkey Kong is an arcade game released by Nintendo in 1981 and their first major success in North America and is well known as the first ever appearance of popular Nintendo mascots like Mario and DK and is the first installment in the Mario and Donkey Kong franchises. This game was one of Nintendo's efforts to make a big profit in the North American market and would soon begin a history of Nintendo's success as a gaming company. This arcade game was also set an example for platformers, as it is only the second platformer to ever be released after Space Panic in 1980, which borrows a lot from that game. Background History Downfall of Nintendo When Nintendo tried to support their company with the North American market, things started to go downhill since their games were not gaining enough traction. In order to keep the company from shutting down, company president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, had an idea to convert the Radar Scope, a poorly selling arcade game, into a more action style game to appeal to gamers. To do this, he approached a young designer, named Shigeru Miyamoto, to design the game and the head engineer, Gunpei Yokoi to supervise the project. Miyamoto said that during production, he wasn't focusing on the story and more on the characters and gameplay, since that was what most people cared about. Donkey Kong was originally supposed to be a Popeye game, which is why the characters share similar traits, with Jumpman being Popeye, Pauline being Olive Oil, and DK being Bluto. This was changed as a Popeye game wouldn't sell well and they couldn't get the license, so Miyamoto made his own characters which would become Nintendo mascots and the most popular icons in the video game industry. Other inspirations include Beauty and the Beast and the popular 1933 film "King Kong", but we'll get into that later. Miyamoto had high hopes for the product, since it needed to save their business. Development Miyamoto ended up doing a lot, despite not having that much experience in design. He ended up having over 20k of code and composed music for the game with an electronic keyboard with Yukio Kaneoki. Designing the game was hard, considering how Miyamoto wanted to make unique animations, sprites and sizes for the characters which was something the software couldn't do well, as well as including multiple stages, all with different layouts instead of using them multiple times, since there were only four people programming. The circuit board of Radar Scope was restructured for Donkey Kong. The Radar Scope hardware was designed for a large number of enemies moving around at high speeds but the development team removed unnecessary functions and reduced the circuit board for more space. While the gameplay and graphics were reworked for the ROM, the CPU, sound and monitor were left intact. The Hardware had the capacity for displaying 128 foreground sprites at 16x16 pixels and 256 background tiles at 8x8 pixels. Jumpman uses one sprite, Pauline uses two, and DK uses six. Hiroshi Yamauchi phoned Minoru Arakawa, head of Nintendo's operations in the U.S.. Nintendo's American distributors, Ron Judy and Al Stone, brought Arakawa to a lawyer named Howard Lincoln to secure a trademark. After designing the game, it was sent to America for testing. The sales manager disliked the idea of the game for being too different from the maze/shooter games common at the time, but Arakawa believed the success. Several arcade machines were planted with the game inside. When the managers saw sales, they bought more units. In their Redmond headquarters, Arakawa, his wife Yoko, James, Judy, Phillips, and Stone coverted 2,000 surplus Radar Scope machines into Donkey Kong motherboards from Japan. This caused Donkey Kong to become even more successful and ended up saving the company of Nintendo. Lawsuits However, this did not mean they were completely safe, since they had major lawsuits on their hands. Universal Studios' "King Kong" Lawsuit First lawsuit was with Universal Studios. In 1982, Universal tried to sue Nintendo, because Nintendo stole property of similarities with Donkey Kong and King Kong. Howard Lincoln, attorney and future president of Nintendo of America, fought the case for Nintendo and hired attorney John Kirby to help. Kirby showed that not only was Nintendo not in violation of any rights, but Universal Studios sued RKO Pictures to prove that the plot of King Kong was in public domain. Judge Robert Sweet ended up going for Nintendo's favor and Universal paid Nintendo $1.8 million in legal fees. John Kirby was rewarded with a $30,000 sailboat, christened the Donkey Kong, and got "exclusive worldwide rights to use the name for sailboats." This lawyer's name could've also inspired the pink puffball, Kirby. Crazy Kong Lawsuit Another lawsuit happened on June 30, 1982, when Nintendo of America filled a complaint toward Elcon Industries Inc., an arcade hardware manufacturer in Michigan that sold Crazy Kong. The complaint was the licensing with Falcon explicitly forbade the export of Crazy Kong outside Japan. The case was taken to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, and quickly ruled in favor of Nintendo. Ikegami Tsushinki Lawsuit Another lawsuit involved Ikegami Tsushinki, a contractor that had worked at Nintendo. For Donkey Kong's development, the two companies signed a contract which gave Ikegami Tsushinki exclusive rights to manufacture Donkey Kong arcade boards. In 1983, Ikegami Tsushinki sued Nintendo for violating the contract and produced 80,000 arcade boards on their own. Ikegami Tsushinki also sought compensation for the use of reverse-engineered Donkey Kong code in Donkey Kong Jr, and claimed it owned the copyright on Donkey Kong's code. The case went to the Tokyo District Court until March 26, 1990, when the two companies went to court. The lawsuit has often been stated to be the reason behind the lack of re-releases of the arcade version of Donkey Kong and the release of Donkey Kong Original Edition. Story Donkey Kong is praised for being one of the first video games to have a plot that unfolds on screen with cutscenes. The game takes place in a construction site, where the main character, Jumpman, works at. During this job, he had a wife named Pauline and somehow a giant pet ape named Donkey Kong that he forcefully captured from the jungle. DK was mistreated by his owner, to the point where he went berserk, escaped, and kidnapped Pauline over his shoulders and took her to the top of the dangerous construction site, forcing Jumpman to rescue her. Jumpman continuously climbs the site, but every time he reaches Pauline, DK grabs her first and climbs even higher. Luckily for Jumpman, once he climbs 100m, he makes to the top, unscrews some bars, and saves Pauline. This causes Donkey Kong to fall onto a platform, hit his head, and get knocked out, being caged by Jumpman again. After that, Mario and Pauline reunite. This game set the trope of "damsel in distress before many games in the video game industries did in their stories. Official Story Quoted from Nintendo of America "HELP! HELP!" cries the beautiful maiden as she is dragged up a labyrinth of structural beams by the ominous Donkey Kong. "SNORT. SNORT." Foreboding music warns of the eventual doom that awaits the poor girl, lest she somehow be miraculously rescued. "But wait! Fear not, fair maiden. Little Mario, the carpenter, is in hot pursuit of you this very moment." Throwing fate to the wind, risking life and limb, or worse, little Mario tries desperately to climb the mighty fortress of steel, to save the lovely lady from the evil Mr. Kong. Little Mario must dodge all manner of obstacles- fireballs, plummeting beams and a barrage of exploding barrels fired at him by Donkey Kong. Amidst the beautiful girl's constant pleas for help, your challenge is to maneuver little Mario up the steel structure, while helping him to avoid the rapid-fire succession of hazards that come his way. As little Mario gallantly battles his way up the barriers, he is taunted and teased by Donkey Kong, who brazenly struts back and forth, beating his chest in joyful exuberance at the prospect of having the beautiful girl all to himself. It is your job to get little Mario to the top. For it is there, and only there, that he can send the mighty Donkey Kong to his mortal doom. Leaving Little Mario and the beautiful girl to live happily ever after. "SIGH. SIGH." So, if you want the most exciting, most fun-filled, most talked about family video game on the market, don't monkey around with anything but the original Donkey Kong. Gameplay